If you haven’t, you should as the price of RON 95 petrol is expected to rise gradually from January 2020 onwards by one sen per week till it reaches market price – estimated to be around the RM2.30 to RM2.40 mark, subject to prevailing crude oil prices.
(BREAKING NEWS: A couple of hours after we published this story, the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister announced that the Petrol Subsidy Programme or PSP has now been put off until further notice, which means that the subsidised price of RON 95 petrol would remain at RM 2.08 per litre for the foreseeable future.)
But more than that, the EURO 4M spec – as gazetted by the government to come into effect on 1st January, 2020 after numerous delays, will be better for environment as well as your car courtesy as its low sulphur content which is now rated at 50 parts per million (ppm) or lower, compared to 500 ppm of the existing EURO 2M specification. According to Petronas, the benzene content for EURO 4M RON 95 has been reduced by 30% to 3.5% while vapour pressure cut by 7% to 65kPa.
While Shell was first to announce the availability of EURO 4M RON 95 petrol at selected stations, Petronas had already begun supplying its stations since early December with EURO 4M-rated Primax 95 with Pro-Drive, so your vehicles may have already been running on the low-sulphur concoction if you are a regular customer of Petronas stations.
Whether you can feel any discernible difference in the performance of your vehicle after filling up with EURO 4 RON 95 petrol is subject to various factors, but what comes out of the tailpipe is certainly less impactful to the environment, with lower levels of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). One thing is for sure, the catalytic converter in your vehicle would also have an easier time in cleaning up the aforementioned gaseous by-products, aside from the fact that the presence of sulphur is also known to contaminate catalytic converters.
It’s interesting to note that the European Union implemented EURO 4 way back in 2005, and that Thailand was the first country in the region to adopt EURO 4 in 2012. Suffice to say, it has been a long time coming for Malaysia, but better late than never.
